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Updated at 4.50pm
58 PEOPLE HAVE been killed and over 515 hospitalised following a mass shooting in Las Vegas.
The so-called Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, without providing evidence – although investigators say no link with international terror has been determined.
A gunman, who was on an upper floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, opened fire on a large crowd at an open-air music festival in the city shortly after 10pm local time (6am Irish time).
Police believe the gunman killed himself before he was confronted by police on the 32nd floor of the hotel.
The incident is believed to be the worst mass shooting in US history. Authorities confirmed shortly before 5pm Irish time that 515 people had been hospitalised following the attack.
The gunman has been named as Stephen Craig Paddock, 64-year-old man from the Mesquite area of rural Nevada. Police said they believe this was a ‘lone wolf’ attack.
Paddock checked into the hotel as a guest, and had been staying there since last Thursday.
At least ten guns were found in the 32nd floor hotel room from which the gunman opened fire at concertgoers.
He is not believed to have come to the attention of police for any reason in advance of this attack, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the mass shooting this afternoon, saying that the perpetrator was “a soldier” who had converted to Islam months ago, but without providing any evidence to support those claims.
It did not name the suspected shooter, but said he had “executed the operation in response to calls to target countries of the coalition” batting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
IS often claims attacks by individuals inspired by its message but with no known links to the group.
In the briefing shortly before 5pm, investigators said that that as yet no link with any international terrorist group had been determined.
Eric Paddock, a brother of the attacker, told reporters today that the gunman had no religious or political affiliation. He said he was at a loss to explain what had happened.
Authorities swarmed the Las Vegas strip after they received initial reports of an active shooter near the Route 91 Harvest country music festival.
Concert-goers reported seeing muzzle flashes from the upper floors of the hotel and the sound of what they described as automatic gun fire.
There was mass panic as concert-goers fled the scene of the attack. Videos from the incident show people running and cowering in fear as what sounds like machine gun fire is heard.
Las Vegas police confirmed this afternoon that an off-duty officer was killed during the attack. Two on-duty officers were also injured – one of whom has since been upgraded from critical to stable condition. The other officer sustained life-threatening wounds.
Clark County’s sheriff said officers confronted the suspect on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across the street from the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival.
Police have determined that a woman they were seeking is no longer considered a “person of interest” in the investigation.
Officers say they don’t believe 62-year-old Marilou Danley was involved in the shooting, having initially said they were seeking the woman, and that she may have been the roommate of the shooter.
MGM Resorts International – which runs the hotel where the shooting took place – released a statement saying that its hotels would remain on lock down until further notice.
US president Donald Trump this morning expressed his condolences with the victims and families of the victims.
“My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!” the president tweeted.
‘People were running and crying’
Tipperary native Martin Fogarty – who has been living in the US for 11 years – is staying in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and was in the nearby MGM when the shooting broke out.
“I was heading back to the hotel when my boss called me saying, ‘I’m not trying to freak you out but you need to stay where you are’,” Fogarty told TheJournal.ie.
She said they were hearing what sounded like gunfire everywhere.
Fogarty left MGM and went into the Tropicana, where people were told to stay while the incident was ongoing.
“After a while people just started streaming in. They were running, they were crying. A couple of people had minor injuries,” he said.
Fogarty said that everyone was ordered to shelter in place at the hotel and that they were being moved down to a convention area.
He said regular announcements over the intercom were advising people to remain safe and that the hotel they were sheltering in was secure.
The Irish Consulate in the US said that it was aware of the situation and advised citizens to follow the directions of the police.
Foreign Affairs Minister simon Coveney issued a statement condemning the attack and offering condolences to the families of the victims.
“I strongly condemn the attack at the route 91 Harvest country music festival,” Coveney said.
“This was a savage and brutal attack targeting innocent festival-goers.
I wish to express my heartfelt condolences and those of the Irish people to the families of the victims, those who were injured and to the people and the authorities of the United States on this tragic day.
“Beyond horrific”
Country music star Jason Aldean – who was performing onstage when the shooting broke out – posted on Instagram following the incident.
“Tonight has been beyond horrific,” he said.
“I still don’t know what to say but wanted to let everyone know that Me and my Crew are safe.
My Thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved tonight. It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming out to enjoy what should have been a fun night.
Multiple videos from the festival show large crowds fleeing the area following bursts of what sounds like rapid gunfire.
(If you can’t view the video click here)
Witnesses said they saw multiple victims and dozens of ambulances near the concert venue. Some attendees later huddled in the basement of the nearby Tropicana hotel-casino.
Officers carrying assault rifles ran into the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
Authorities shut down part of the Las Vegas Strip and Interstate 15. Flights were temporarily halted at McCarran International Airport because of the shooting, the airport said on its verified Twitter account.
Home search
Heavily armed police have been searching the Mesquite, Nevada retirement-community home of Stephen Paddock.
In an update this afternoon, local police said they had found guns and ammunition at the address, but said any further details of that find would be provided by the lead investigators at Las Vegas police.
A local officer who briefed media said there was “nothing out of the ordinary” about the home, and described it as a “regular neighbourhood”.
A number of neighbours were evacuated from their homes in advance of the planned search, he said.
Paddock had never come to the attention of police in the area for any reason, the officer told reporters.
Separately, Las Vegas police said this afternoon that the process of identifying all the injured and dead would take time, and asked the public for patience.
An appeal was also made for blood donations.
With reporting from Associated Press, Christine Bohan and Daragh Brophy.
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They may have discovered what caused the potato blight.
The famine however, was not entirely caused by the blight.
You’re talking about The English aren’t you.
You took the words out of my mouth. What caused the FAMINE was the export of grain and beef to the British empire for massive profits.
Worse thing we ever did.we ran the Vikings out and let the Brits in.food was much nice under the Vikings.
Worse thing we ever did.we ran the Brits out and let the EUSSR in.
It wasn’t genocide it was rich v poor, they would have done the same at home for the dosh. Sadly even today it is still rich v poor, but it’s easy to muddy the waters when emotive words like genocide are used.
There was too many of us and plus they needed people to populate the new world. It wasn’t just an Irish thing, it was a European thing.
Nice to see a reasoned response. Reliance on the potato was, in many cases, caused by Catholic sub-letters. Research has shown that reliance on this food was not ‘mad’, in fact Irish labourers had a very nutritious intake. Stats on army and navy recruits show that this class were taller, stronger and (travel accounts report) exceedingly better looking than their English counterparts.
religion shouldn’t come into it but we tend to forget that the very poor starved at the expense of the better off, Catholic and Protestant, rich and poor, English and Irish. Back in the day, technology and the machinery of government were simply not in place to alleviate such a catastrophic event. An ‘Irish’ government would not have done much better.
@Summoning Dark
Agreed – not a case of genocide but definitely a case of rich vs poor, unbridled greed, and laissez-faire ideology gone mad, coupled with a widely held (but mistaken) view in London that reports of the dire situation in Ireland were exaggerated.
Come to think of it, there are a lot of overlaps with today there, except that the mantra of “laissez-faire at all costs” has been replaced with the mantra of “pay the bondholders at all costs”, ironically pretty much the diametric opposite of laissez-faire :-(
Derek your view is way too simplistic if you dont mind me saying: per head of population lost, the Irish famine is the most catastrophic there has ever been in history. Other countries put relief plans in place, the British didn’t, at least not in ireland. they were told time after time, in the years before the famine, that ireland was a disaster waiting to happen. they did nothing and instead they used this ‘act of god’ when it eventually happened, to clear the countryside of unwanted peasants.
“Religion shouldn’t come into it”..
Soup kitchens were run by different churches in a sick attempt to gain new converts not humanitarian aid.
Food was used as religious currency.
You’re right it’s not black and white but sectarianism was certainly rife.
We haven’t yet commemorated/ remembered it properly yet because its still raw. Fair play to Michael D for his work on it.
It was a passive genocide. It could easily have been stopped. The market was more important than people’s lives, and you can be damn sure the fact it was Irish and not English lives was a core part of that.
It’s ironic that those US republicans with Irish heritage that are ridiculously far right and for the market solving all the worlds problems, are actually from the stock of people that suffered most from that very political ideal.
Pathogen me balls, twas the English.
colonial Brits were akin to a pathogen
Queen Victoria personally ordered the Famine.
And she had so many children so they could help her eat as many potatoes as possible, thereby worsening the situation.
To use an old quote: “The Almighty may have sent the blight, but the English caused the famine!”.
Genocide can’t be diced up in a lab..
Well according to Father Ted it was the Catholic Church’s fault as they ‘closed down all the factories making the potatoes’. Got a ring of truth to it.
The famine was our holocaust and to be fair, while the welsh and Scottish suffered I don’t think it was on a par with what happened here. The desolation and suffering that happened on this island would not have been tolerated ‘mainland’ GB.
Remember too that although Britain gets and deserves much of the blame, the army regiments that escorted food out of the country under armed guard were often Irish; the police and landlords’ agents who evicted starving families and demolished their homes were mostly Irish; the shopkeepers who profiteered and the people who grabbed the land were Irish.was it genocide or not? I’ve read several books on the subject and I can’t decide: it’s not as black and white as issue as some would suggest. Tim Pat Coogan gas a recent very interesting book on the subject ( the Famine Plot).
The rural poor across Britain and Ireland and much of Europe depended on the Potato. The blight destroyed it across all areas. The rest did not export their food and made it available to the starving.
Britain did not have the food to resolve this so it imported food from Ireland.
That is what an empire and a colony are about. Use other’s resources to look after your own. It’s nothing personal.
Ireland was a cash cow to be milked dry.
You’re right Cal
Cal_u
Ireland still remains a cach cow being milked dry!
And still is
That’s it Call, and its why I will never understand the Scots and Welsh being happy with a so called Union with England. It’s not a Union, its an empire and has always been run for the advantage of England, and even at that the south of England.
Sure, the potatoes were not viable at the time but there was food. Lots of food. Famine is more about the distribution of food rather than its lack. US-1 is not why millions went hungry #whitewash
It’s called colonialism
Who’s going to break the news to them that they’re a bit too late….
The blight was not confined to Ireland. The Welsh suffered as much as we did.
“In Europe a great deal of change also took place. The Late Blight of Potato also struck throughout Europe. However, famine did not occur because of diversified agriculture. Nevertheless, hunger did come and prices did go up because of the failure of the potato crop. This caused discontent among the working class people throughout Europe. Riots and revolts occurred throughout the capitals of Europe. This was the time in which Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and there was growing sympathy for the causes of young radicals: Kossuth, Hungarian revolutionary who fought for an independent Hungary and led the provisional government in 1849 until Russia intervened; Mazzini, an Italian patriot who fought for an independent and unified Italy; and Lamartine, French poet and minister of foreign affair in 1848. In Paris, Berlin, Vienna, etc., monarchies fell, republics were borne. New constitutions were granted
Although social changes occurred almost immediately, an end to the Potato Blight did not. The disease struck again in 1872 and again in 1879. Although John Lindley did observe, as early as 1846, that downwind from the copper works, in Swansea, Wales, the potato plants remained green and healthy, it would be many years later, in 1885, that a copper sulfate and lime solution, the Bordeaux Mixture, would be discovered that would kill this dreaded plant disease.”
Worth a read if you have time http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/LECT06.HTM
Uncle Mort, from what I remember of history, the English weren’t exactly fond of the Welsh either. In fact they seemed to have it in for the Celtic nations – and anyone else who wasn’t either Anglo-Saxon or stronger than themselves. :-)
…or anyone else not part of the wealthy top few percent, eg children down mines, or working (and dying) in cotton mills in 19th C England.
Pretty much like the top few percent in Ireland & most everywhere else. Let’s not forget that whilst we’re throwing about unqualified general statements about ‘nationalities’. ;)
Anglo-saxons were only an elite ruling class really before the Normans stole that mantle. I understand that 75% of residents in Brit and Ire today are descended from peoples who arrived here at c. 7500 BC or earlier.
No famine as there was plenty of food…..but there was starvation.
‘Well you will pay the price if you’re a fussy eater’
Everlast, I don’t think anyone else watches Alan Partridge.
Indeed my friend… their loss!
Great episode! “Sunday, bloody Sunday. Really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday”
“Scientists have figured out what caused the Irish Famine”
I’ll have a wild guess…. Was it Blight?
Exactly what I thought when I read the headline first! Potatoes failed = famine in almost exclusively potato eating poor. Now who would have suspected that?
But actually this is research that’s good to know.
Brief history of the world.
1. The rich f••k the poor
The End
Maybe I’m spud picking here but to me the headline for this article is way off.
Famine: A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, population unbalance, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality.
What Scientists have figured out is what caused the potato blight during the famine, Not what caused the Irish Famine.
History always needs to be reported 100% correctly as a mark of respect, Plus in 100 years time some kid could use this article as a piece in his/her exam and fail. And that kid could be a great great grandchild of yours Michelle, Who knows…
Ps. old hair style was better
The definition you supplied is not yours but you give the impression it is yours. This is called plagiarism. You should have acknowledged the source as Wikipedia. All history is written from a particular viewpoint. There is no such thing as one hundred per cent accurate history. It would appear that you would prefer to have the article skewed towards your particular viewpoint. Just because you were fed a particular brand of history does not make it accurate. A lot of your rants are the result of the effects of cognitive dissonance. Stick to the spud picking.
You’re wrong pauric the article headline is incorrect and really should be changed. Blight killed the spuds but there was plenty of food in Ireland at that time…
In your face podge, in your face
Now all the scientists need to do is invent a time machine
I just twigged on to this bit in my link above.
“This caused discontent among the working class people throughout Europe. Riots and revolts occurred throughout the capitals of Europe. ”
Just like it is now, we roll over and take it :-(
Sloppy title for article; famine is caused by lack of food, caused by failure of the potato crop, caused by blight. What the scientists did was to identify the strain of blight.
Island nation, why didn’t they eat fish??
It’s widely believed that the famine was not as devastating in coastal areas.
But you can’t fish with no equipment. And although we’re a small island it can’t be traversed by foot. Coastal areas were not accessible by many.
And for years the Brits refused to invest in the infrastructure to fish on a large scale i.e. piers, boats. NO industries were developed here as the land was needed for farming to feed Britain, which was not producing enough food to sustain itself. The reason so many were evicted was so the land could be freed up for agricultural production: there was more profit to be made than by letting the land to tenants who couldn’t afford the high rents
The famine did not strike as hard in coastal areas because of this, typhoid fever was the killer there as it struck from other areas inland.
Fishing had to be done covertly as the waters belonged to the Crown and the Aristocracy. It was illegal to fish them.
Same as hunting rabbits and game was an illegal activity and one that was actively checked for. The searching of houses for dead rabbits on Tory Island being one of the more well known examples.
Every river in the country was netted heavily legally or not. In Connemara the sea trout were once used to fertilise fields they were so plentiful.
The Brits scared all the fish away.
Well well well -
The disease that hit our spuds is most likely extinct they say
DNA extracted from museum specimens shows the strain that changed history is different from modern day epidemics, and is probably now extinct.
The funny thing is, it is happening all over again. You could say that it was the high price of grain that sparked the Arab spring. (For pedantics, “sparked”, not “cause of”). Those who ignore history, are condemned to repeat it.
Why didnt they just make beans on toast or something simple
Or even a couple of packets of tayto would of kept them going
thompson the unionist fcukpig is back stirring shyte.
Thompson makes no apologies for having a sense of humour.
As if you were affected by the famine you clown.
Its ok for you to spread your pro IRA bile in regard to the troubles – An era thats still fresh in people memory.
Shane they had no spuds to make Tayto with- Duh!
Duh! Taytos don’t use potatoes – they use crisps!
Just in the nick of time!
Q: Precisely how many potatoes does it take to kill millions of Irish people?
A: No potatoes.
Most scientists who work on the potato blight are careful to say the pathogen “triggered” the famine not “caused” it. The media doesn’t always follow. We understand the socioeconomic dimension of this tragedy.
What about peels brimstone? There was no famine.
What caused the famine!! It took scientists to figure this out! No bloody food that’s what caused the famine!
nicola,
there was enough food in ireland between 1846-51 to feed 50 million people, the vast majority of it was taken out by the british navy after been guarded and loaded by the british army.
*being
Paid by the aristocracy, I seriously doubt that the average pauper in Britain at the time was responsible, but you would still spew hate at them all the same wouldn’t you?
Yeah a British army whose regiments were made up of mostly Irish men. Orish soldiers played a significant part in the building up of the British empire
The Germans are responsible for the lack of money ,helped by the Irish government
It’s labours way
We should never forget but what’s the point in hating Brits for something they don’t even know about.
The article is based on science. A lot of comments are based on popular nonsense steeped in ignorance and spread by the ignorant.
have your say